Posted by Adarsh Fernando, Senior Product Manager, Android Studio
Three years ago, we changed how we named and versioned Android Studio to make it easier to follow updates – we changed how we numbered the versions of the IDE to more closely map to versioning of the IntelliJ IDEA platform, on which Android Studio is built. We also introduced animal codenames to signify each major release, starting with Arctic Fox. Our most recent release, Koala (2024.1.1), will soon be available in the Beta channel and is built on top of IntelliJ IDEA 2024.1. All Studio releases use a version number that maps to the following schema:
<Year of IntelliJ Version>.<IntelliJ major version>.<Studio major version>
Soon, we are launching the Koala Feature Drop to the Canary channel as version 2024.1.2 — our second release based on IntelliJ IDEA 2024.1. This signals the start of an improved release cycle, where each animal codename includes two major Studio releases: a platform update followed by a feature drop.
The initial animal releases will have the ‘.1’ Android Studio major version and introduce the updated IntelliJ platform version, while subsequent Feature Drops will increase the Android major version to ‘.2’ and focus on introducing Android-specific features that help you be more productive for Android app development.
Versioning system
Year of IntelliJ Version
IntelliJ major version
Studio major version
Jellyfish
2023
.3
.1
Koala
2024
.1
.1
Koala Feature Drop
2024
.1
.2
Leading with IDE platform updates
Going forward, each new “animal” of Android Studio will prioritize updates to the underlying IntelliJ platform. This focus on foundational elements lets developers benefit from usability, performance, and stability improvements to the underlying IntelliJ IDEA platform.
The base version of Android Studio Koala, numbered 2024.1.1 and launched to Canary in March, focuses on adopting updates from IntelliJ IDEA 2024.1. Some benefits of this platform update include:
Sticky lines in the editor to simplify working with large files and exploring new codebases
Overhauled terminal featuring both visual and functional enhancements
Basic IDE functionalities available for Java and Kotlin during indexing
Language injections in string templates
(Alpha) K2 Kotlin mode for enhanced Kotlin code analysis
By focusing a whole release cycle on updating to the latest IntelliJ IDEA platform version, we’re able to get those changes into the Stable channel faster than with the previous release process — ensuring developers have access to the latest upstream features and improvements.
Android-specific functionality with Feature Drops
Feature Drops are built on top of the IntelliJ platform updates, and follow soon after each new animal release.
Android Studio is a tailored environment for Android developers. You will continue to receive new and updated features specifically designed for Android development. These will arrive through Feature Drops that share the same animal codename as the base release, and will follow soon after the base animal release hits the Stable channel. Our first such release is Android Studio Koala Feature Drop, and numbered 2024.1.2.
When the Android Studio Koala Feature Drop is available, you can benefit from these new features:
A new sign-in flow that makes onboarding with multiple Google services, such as Firebase and Gemini in Android Studio, much easier
Device UI Setting Shortcuts in the Running Device Window to quickly test your app against different device UI settings
A new Gemini API template to help build Generative AI into your app
Feature Drops will leverage the stabilized IDE platform from the previous Android Studio update and focus on new features geared towards Android development. By doing so, we hope to bring these features to the stable channel faster and with higher quality. To learn about even more new features coming to Koala Feature Drop, make sure to tune in to Google I/O 2024.
To sum it up: 2X more frequent updates
Expected release schedule in the Android Studio Stable channel.
Our primary goal with these changes is to ensure that important updates to the IntelliJ IDEA platform reach the Android Studio Stable channel more frequently, and new Android-specific features ship with higher quality and polish. Expect the first animal release to introduce a number of updates from the latest IntelliJ IDEA platform, with a Feature Drop update to follow soon after with more Android-specific features and tools.
By separating IDE platform updates from Feature Drops, we can deliver both types of enhancements in a more streamlined manner, resulting in much more frequent updates to the stable channel that are each focused on improving your productivity.
Similarly, versions of the Android Gradle plugin will also see updates to the stable channel more frequently. Each new animal version and Feature Drop of Android Studio will be accompanied by a new version of the Android Gradle plugin. For example, Android Studio Koala was released alongside AGP 8.5 and Android Studio Koala Feature Drop will be released alongside AGP 8.6.
As always, if you want to be on the cutting edge, we encourage you to join the Canary channel by downloading and installing Android Studio Koala Feature Drop for early access to the latest and greatest. Also you can be part of our vibrant Android developer community on LinkedIn, Medium, YouTube, or X.
Posted by Paris Hsu – Product Manager, Android Studio
Android Studio Jellyfish (2023.3.1) is making waves with its official stable release! 🪼🌊 Dive into cutting-edge AI features like Gemini in Android Studio, seamless Google services integrations like Android Device Streaming, and much more. All designed to supercharge your Android development to build next-generation, high-quality apps.
Surf below to learn more about all the updates, product quality improvements, and new features across your key flows in Android Studio Jellyfish, and download the latest stable version today to try them out!
Develop
Gemini in Android Studio: stable, and now available in 200+ countries!
Today, Gemini in Android Studio is available in over 200+ countries and territories, including a new set of countries in Europe. Thanks to all of the valuable feedback you’ve provided us over the last year, we’re excited to bring Gemini in Android Studio (formerly Studio Bot) into this stable release of Android Studio, as your AI-powered development companion in Android Studio, ready to level up your productivity. Ask your Android development questions and get help instantly: whether it’s to generate code, find resources, or explain best practices, Gemini in Android Studio is here to save you valuable time. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with your workflow:
Chat: Get code samples and questions answered
AI code completion: Intelligent suggestions as you type
Error analysis: Understand Logcat and Build errors with ease
Smart actions: Streamline tasks with powerful shortcuts
Onboard and then opt-in with the built-in AI privacy controls, and learn more about how the current capabilities of Gemini in Android Studio can accelerate your development workflow.
Modular login permissions
To provide you with more precise control over the permissions you grant for specific features, the new sign-in flow lets you select only the Google Service integrations you want to enable. This means you decide exactly which features, like Gemini for Android Studio, App Quality Insights, and Android Device Streaming, are able to access the required Google services using your Google account.
Manage login settings in Android Studio
Switch accounts in Android Studio
Debug
Android Device Streaming, powered by Firebase
Android Device Streaming, powered by Firebase, lets you securely connect to remote physical Android devices hosted in Google's secure data centers. It’s a fast and easy way to test your app against physical units of some of the latest Android devices, including the Google Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, Pixel Fold, select Samsung devices, and more.
Device Streaming in Android Studio, running your app on a remote Pixel Fold
After connecting to a device, you can deploy your app, view the display, interact with the device (including rotating or unfolding the device), and anything else you might do with a device using a direct ADB over SSL connection—all without leaving Android Studio. When you're done using the device, Google wipes all your data and factory resets the device before making it available to another developer.
Android Device Streaming is currently available as a no-cost trial after you sign in to Android Studio with your Google account and select a Firebase project to use. If you don’t already have a Firebase project, it’s easy to create one.
AQI Crashlytics: Multi-events, keys, and logs
Dive deeper into App Quality Insights (AQI) crash reports with Android Studio Jellyfish! We've listened to your feedback and made analyzing crashes easier than ever:
Iterate through events: Now explore multiple events within a Crashlytics report in reverse chronological order, revealing patterns for faster debugging.
Explore custom data: View custom keys/values and logs for each Crashlytics crash report (find them in the Keys and Logs tabs after selecting a report).
Analyze ANRs (Application Not Responding): Access and investigate ANRs directly within both the Android Vitals and Crashlytics tabs.
Device Streaming in Android Studio, running your app on a remote Pixel Fold
Embedded Layout Inspector
In Android Studio Jellyfish, Layout Inspector is now embedded by default in the Running Devices tool window. This integration saves screen real-estate, centralizes your workflow in a single tool window, and delivers significant performance gains - with a 50% improvement in rendering speeds. You can effortlessly toggle between deeply inspecting and interacting with your app, and use snapshots for 3D visualizations of your UI. Discover the full range of features here.
Embedded Layout Inspector with Pixel Fold Emulator
Optimize
App Links Assistant: Web associations file support
App Links Assistant now supports web association file validation. This new feature streamlines deep linking by helping you identify and fix errors in your deep links setup (both in your Android manifest file and the corresponding Digital Asset Links JSON file). Ensure a seamless user experience by validating that your JSON file is correctly formatted for upload to your domain.
App Links Assistant: Web associations file support
Baseline Profile installation
Baseline Profiles improve code execution speed by about 30% from the first launch by avoiding interpretation and just-in-time (JIT) compilation steps for included code paths. While Android Studio has included Baseline Profiles in builds for years now, these were only actually compiled by the OS in production (often by Play Store).
Android Studio Jellyfish now compiles these Baseline Profiles when any non-debuggable app build is installed on a device. This applies to release builds, as well as when you're profiling with low-overhead.
This means — as long as you aren't using a debug variant of your app — the performance you see when installing from Studio / CLI now much more closely matches production by taking advantage of profiles from a Baseline Profile generator module and libraries like Compose.
Quality improvements
Beyond new features, we also continue to improve the overall quality and stability of Android Studio. In fact, over 900 bugs were addressed during the Jellyfish/AGP-8.4 cycle, and memory errors are down by 40%.
IntelliJ platform update
Android Studio Jellyfish (2023.3.1) includes the IntelliJ 2023.3 platform release, which has many new features such as comprehensive support for the latest Java 21 programing language features, an intuitive floating toolbar with editing actions, and a Run to Cursor inlay option in the debugger to speed up your workflow. Learn more.
Summary
To recap, Android Studio Jellyfish 🪼includes the following enhancements and features:
Develop
Gemini in Android Studio
Modular login permissions
Debug
Android Device Streaming
AQI Crashlytics: Multi-events, keys, and logs
Embedded Layout Inspector
Optimize
App Links Assistant: Web associations file support
Baseline Profile installation
Quality Improvements
900+ bugs addressed
Memory errors down by 40%
IntelliJ Platform Update
Latest Java 21 feature support
Run to Cursor inlay option
More 2023.3 features
Getting Started
Ready for next-level Android development? Download Android Studio Jellyfish 🪼 and unlock cutting-edge features today! As always, your feedback is important to us – check known issues, report bugs, suggest improvements, and be part of our vibrant community on LinkedIn, Medium, YouTube, or X. Let's build the future of Android apps together!
Posted by Sandhya Mohan – Product Manager, Android Studio
As part of the next chapter of our Gemini era, we announced we were bringing Gemini to more products. Today we’re excited to announce that Android Studio is using the Gemini 1.0 Pro model to make Android development faster and easier, and we’ve seen significant improvements in response quality over the last several months through our internal testing. In addition, we are making this transition more apparent by announcing that Studio Bot is now called Gemini in Android Studio.
Gemini in Android Studio is an AI-powered coding assistant which can be accessed directly in the IDE. It can accelerate your ability to develop high-quality Android apps faster by helping generate code for your app, providing complex code completions, answering your questions, finding relevant resources, adding code comments and more — all without ever having to leave Android Studio. It is available in 180+ countries and territories in Android Studio Jellyfish.
If you were already using Studio Bot in the canary channel, you’ll continue experiencing the same helpful and powerful features, but you’ll notice improved quality in responses compared to earlier versions.
Ask Gemini your Android development questions
Gemini in Android Studio can understand natural language, so you can ask development questions in your own words. You can enter your questions in the chat window ranging from very simple and open-ended ones to specific problems that you need help with.
Here are some examples of the types of queries it can answer:
How do I add camera support to my app?
Using Compose, I need a login screen with the following: a username field, a password field, a 'Sign In' button, a 'Forgot Password?' link. I want the password field to obscure the input.
What's the best way to get location on Android?
I have an 'orders' table with columns like 'order_id', 'customer_id', 'product_id', 'price', and 'order_date'. Can you help me write a query that calculates the average order value per customer over the last month?
Gemini in Android Studio remembers the context of the conversation, so you can also ask follow-up questions, such as “Can you give me the code for this in Kotlin?” or “Can you show me how to do it in Compose?”
Code faster with AI powered Code Completions
Gemini in Android Studio can help you be more productive by providing you with powerful AI code completions. You can receive suggestions of multi-line code completions, suggestions for how to do comments for your code, or how to add documentation to your code.
Designed with privacy in mind
Gemini in Android Studio was designed with privacy in mind. Gemini is only available after you log in and enable it. You don’t need to send your code context to take advantage of most features. By default, Gemini in Android Studio’s chat responses are purely based on conversation history, and you control whether you want to share additional context for customized responses. You can update this anytime in Android Studio > Settings at a granular project level. We also have a custom way for you to opt out certain files and folders through an .aiexclude file. Much like our work on other AI projects, we stick to a set of AI Principles that hold us accountable. Learn more here.
Build a Generative AI app using the Gemini API starter template
Not only does Android Studio use Gemini to help you be more productive, it can also help you take advantage of Gemini models to create AI-powered features in your applications. Get started in minutes using the Gemini API starter template available in the canary release – channel for Android Studio – under File > New Project > Gemini API Starter. You can also use the code sample available at File > Import Sample > Google Generative AI sample.
The Gemini API is multimodal, meaning it can support image and text inputs. For example, it can support conversational chat, summarization, translation, caption generation etc. using both text and image inputs.
Try Gemini in Android Studio
Gemini in Android Studio is still in preview, but we have added many feature improvements — and now a major model update — since we released the experience in May 2023. It is currently no-cost for developers to try out. Now is a great time to test it and let us know what you think, before we release this experience to stable.
Stay updated on the latest by following us on LinkedIn, Medium, YouTube, or X. Let's build the future of Android apps together!
Posted by Neville Sicard-Gregory – Senior Product Manager, Android Studio
Today we are launching Android Studio Iguana 🦎 in the stable release channel to make it easier for you to create high quality apps. With features like Version Control System support in App Quality Insights, to the new built-in support to create Baseline Profiles for Jetpack Compose apps, this version should enhance your development workflow as you optimize your app. Download the latest version today!
Check out the list of new features in Android Studio Iguana below, organized by key developer flows.
Debugging
Version control system integration in App Quality Insights
When your release build is several commits behind your local source code, line numbers in Firebase Crashlytics crash reports can easily go stale, making it more difficult to accurately navigate from crash to code when using App Quality Insights. If you’re using git for your version control, there’s now a solution to this problem.
When you build your app using Android Gradle Plugin 8.3 or later and the latest version of the Crashlytics SDK, AGP includes git commit information as part of the build artifact that is published to the Play Store. When a crash occurs, Crashlytics attaches the git information to the report, and Android Studio Iguana uses this information to compare your local checkout with the exact code that caused the crash from your git history.
After you build your app using Android Gradle Plugin 8.3 or higher with the latest Crashlytics SDK, and publish it, new crash reports in the App Quality Insights window let you either navigate to the line of code in your current git checkout or view a diff report between the current checkout and the version of your app codebase that generated the crash report. Learn more.
App Quality Insights with Version Control System Integration
View Crashlytics crash variants in App Quality Insights
Crash variants in App Quality Insights
Today, when you select a Crashlytics issue in App Quality Insights, you see aggregated data from events that share identical points of failure in your code, but may have different root causes. To aid in your analysis of the root causes of a crash, Crashlytics now groups events that share very similar stack traces as issue variants. You can now view events in each variant of a crash report in App Quality Insights by selecting a variant from the dropdown. Alternatively, you can view aggregate information for all variants by selecting All.
Design
Jetpack Compose UI Check
To help developers build adaptive and accessible UI in Jetpack Compose, Iguana introduces a new UI Check mode in Compose Preview. This feature works similarly to visual linting and accessibility checks integrations for views. Activate Compose UI check mode to automatically audit your Compose UI and check for adaptive and accessibility issues across different screen sizes, such as text that's stretched on large screens or low color contrast. The mode highlights issues found in different preview configurations and lists them in the problems panel.
Try it out by clicking the UI Check icon in Compose Preview.
UI Check entry point in Compose Preview
UI Check results of Reply App in Compose Preview
Progressive rendering for Compose Preview
Compose Previews in Android Studio Iguana now implement progressive rendering, allowing you to iterate on your designs with less loading time. This feature automatically lowers the detail of out-of-view previews to boost performance, meaning you can scroll through even the most complex layouts without lag.
Progressive Rendering in Compose
Develop
Intellij Platform Update
Android Studio Iguana includes the IntelliJ 2023.2 platform release, which has many new features such as support for GitLab, text search in Search Everywhere, color customization updates to the new UI and a host of new improvements. Learn more.
Testing
Baseline Profiles module wizard
Many times when you run an Android app for the first time on a device, the app can appear to have a slow start time because the operating system has to run just-in-time compilation. To improve this situation, you can create Baseline Profiles that help Android improve aspects like app start-up time, scrolling, and navigation speed in your apps. We are simplifying the process of setting up a Baseline Profile by offering a new Baseline Profile Generator template in the new module wizard (File > New > New Module). This template configures your project to support Baseline Profiles and employs the latest Baseline Profiles Gradle plugin, which simplifies setup by automating required tasks with a single Gradle command.
Baseline Profile Generator
Furthermore, the template creates a run configuration that enables you to generate a Baseline Profile with a single click from the "Select Run/Debug Configuration" dropdown list.
Generate Baseline Profile drop-down menu
Test against configuration changes with the Espresso Device API
Synchronous testing of window size changes using Espresso Device API
Catch layout problems early and ensure your app delivers a seamless user experience across devices and orientations. The Espresso Device API simulates how your app reacts to configuration changes—such as screen rotation, device folding/unfolding, or window size changes—in a synchronous way on virtual devices. These APIs help you rigorously test and preemptively fix issues that frustrate users so you build more reliable Android apps with confidence. These APIs are built on top of new gRPC endpoints introduced in Android Emulator 34.2, which enables secure bidirectional data streaming and precise sensor simulation.
Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro devices in Android Emulator (34.2)
Test your app on the latest Google Pixel device configurations with the updated Android Virtual Device definitions in Android Studio. With Android Studio Iguana and the latest Android Emulator (34.2+), access the Pixel Fold, Pixel Tablet, Pixel 7a, Pixel 8, and Pixel 8 Pro. Validating your app on these virtual devices is a convenient way to ensure that your app reacts correctly to a variety of screen sizes and device types.
New Pixel Android Virtual Devices in the Android Emulator.
Build
Support for Gradle Version Catalogs
Android Studio Iguana streamlines dependency management with its enhanced support for TOML-based Gradle Version Catalogs. You'll benefit from:
Centralized dependency management: Keep all your project's dependencies organized in a single file for easier editing and updating.
Time-saving features: Enjoy seamless code completion, smart navigation within your code, and the ability to quickly edit project dependencies through the convenient Project Structure dialog.
Increased efficiency: Say goodbye to scattered dependencies and manual version updates. Version catalogs give you a more manageable, efficient development workflow.
New projects will automatically use version catalogs for dependency management. If you have an existing project, consider making the switch to benefit from these workflow improvements. To learn how to update to Gradle version catalogs, see Migrate your build to version catalogs.
Additional SDK insights: policy issues
Android Studio Iguana now proactively alerts you to potential Google Play policy violations through integration with the Google Play SDK Index. Easily see Play policy issues right in your build files and Project Structure Dialog. This streamlines compliance, helping you avoid unexpected publishing delays or rejections on the Google Play Store.
A warning from the Google Play SDK Index in Android Studio’s Project Structure dialog
Android Studio compileSdk version support
Using Android Studio to develop a project that has an unsupported compileSdk version can lead to unexpected errors because older versions of Android Studio may not handle the new Android SDK correctly. To avoid these issues, Android Studio Iguana now explicitly warns you if your project’s intended compileSdk is for a newer version that it does not officially support. If available, it also suggests moving to a version of Android Studio that supports the compileSdk used by your project. Keep in mind that upgrading Android Studio might also require that you upgrade AGP.
Today, we are thrilled to announce the stable release of Android Studio Hedgehog 🦔 : The official IDE for building Android apps!
In this Android Studio release, we have upgraded the IntelliJ platform to 2023.1, with features designed to improve app performance and battery life, make it easier to upgrade applications to the latest Android version, and make it faster to develop using Jetpack Compose. Read on to learn more about how Android Studio Hedgehog can help supercharge your developer productivity.
App performance
Android vitals in App Quality Insights
In addition to helping you investigate crash reports for apps instrumented with the Firebase Crashlytics SDK, App Quality Insights now also includes Android vitals data from Google Play Console. With Android vitals, you can see crash reports for any app you publish to the Google Play Store without requiring additional instrumentation in your app. You can view Android vitals issues, filter them, and see crash insights from Play to quickly understand and resolve the cause of a crash, and jump from stack trace to code all from the App Quality Insights tool window. Learn more.
Note: If you don't have permission to view your app in the Play Console, request that the app admin share read-only access to only app quality information, by clicking Users and permissions > View app quality information (read-only) in the Play Console.
Android Vitals data in App Quality Insights
Power Profiler
The new Power Profiler shows power consumption on devices. It segments the power consumption information by subsystems called "Power Rails". This helps you visualize the correlation between power consumed and the actions occurring in your app. This approach of directly measuring power consumption differs from the legacy Energy Profiler, which only used a model to estimate energy consumption.
By understanding this information, you can potentially identify and fix power consumption issues in your app by running A/B tests to compare the power consumption of different algorithms, features or even different versions of your app.
Apps which are optimized for lower power consumption lead to an improved battery and thermal performance, eventually leading to an improved end user experience. Power Rails data is available on Pixel 6+ devices running Android 10+.
Example of power consumption in different power rails.
Coding productivity
Target Android 14 using Android SDK Upgrade Assistant
The SDK Upgrade Assistant provides a step by step wizard flow to help developers through targetSdkVersion upgrades. It pulls documentation directly into the IDE, saving you time and effort.
Android Studio Hedgehog adds support for upgrading projects to Android 14 (API Level 34). We’ve also added additional relevance filters so that unnecessary steps are removed — and in some cases, the upgrade assistant will pinpoint exactly where in code the changes need to be made.
Android SDK Upgrade Assistant
New UI updates
In the Giraffe release, we launched a new UI for the IDE. This reimagined theme reduces visual complexity and provides easier access to essential features, resulting in a more modern and clean look and feel. We’ve listened to your feedback and, in Hedgehog, we’ve added updates for compact mode, vertical and horizontal splitting, and project tabs for Mac OS. If you have not yet tried the new UI, we encourage you to do so.
Compact mode in the New UI
Device mirroring
You can now mirror your physical Android device in the Running Devices window in Android Studio. While mirroring your device's display directly via ADB over USB or Wi-FI to Android Studio, you can execute common actions such as starting and interacting with apps, rotating the screen, folding and unfolding the phone, changing the volume, and more – directly from within Android Studio. Learn more.
Device Mirroring in the Running Devices window
Embedded Layout Inspector
You now have the option to run the Layout Inspector directly in the Running Devices tool window while running your app on an embedded virtual device or mirrored physical device. This opt-in feature significantly improves performance of Layout Inspector, conserves screen real estate, helps organize your UI debugging workflow in a single tool window, and improves speed while inspecting your layout. In embedded mode, you can show a view hierarchy, inspect the properties of each view, navigate to code using “deep inspect” mode, and access other common Layout Inspector features. Enable it through Settings > Experimental > Layout Inspector
Embedded Layout Inspector
Live Edit updated manual mode shortcut
Live Edit has a new default shortcut for manual mode for: Control+\ (Command+\ for macOS). Manual mode is helpful in situations where you want to have precise control over when updates are deployed to the running application. For more information, see the video clip in Live Edit for Jetpack Compose.
Compose tools
Compose Preview’s Gallery Mode
Gallery mode is a new mode in Compose Preview that lets you focus on one Preview at a time to conserve rendering resources. Use Gallery mode when iterating on UI and switch to other modes (Grid or List) when you need to see UI variants.
Compose Preview’s Gallery Mode
Compose State information in Debugger
When setting a breakpoint on a Composable function, the debugger now lists the parameters of the composable and their state, so you can more easily identify what changes might have caused unexpected recompositions.
Compose State information in Debugger
Compose Multipreview templates
Android Studio Hedgehog includes support for the latest annotations added by the Compose Multipreview API, allowing developers to render common layout scenarios side-by-side while working with the Compose Preview.
The new annotations added include: @PreviewScreenSizes, @PreviewFontScales, @PreviewLightDark, and @PreviewDynamicColors
Compose Multipreview templates
Build tools
New macro to specify JDK path
A new macro, #GRADLE_LOCAL_JAVA_HOME, makes it safer and easier to specify the Java* home path used for the Gradle daemon (background process) execution for your project by referencing your .gradle/config.properties file. This reduces errors related to incompatible Gradle and project JDK versions, since there is now a single source of truth for your Gradle JDK selection.
Starting with Android Studio Hedgehog, new projects will use #GRADLE_LOCAL_JAVA_HOME by default. Existing projects will automatically be migrated to the new macro after a successful sync, unless you're already using a macro like #JAVA_HOME.
[Windows-only] Minimize the impact of antivirus software on build speed
The Build Analyzer informs users if antivirus software may be impacting build performance. This can occur if antivirus software, such as Windows Defender, is performing real-time scanning of directories used by Gradle. Build Analyzer recommends a list of directories to exclude from active scanning, and, if possible, provides a link to add them to the Windows Defender folder exclusion list.
Use Firebase Test Lab devices with Gradle Managed Devices
Gradle Managed Devices can now target Firebase Test Lab devices, and you can utilize it to run your automated tests at scale. Use Gradle Managed Devices to select from a wide range range of both physical and virtual FTL devices, with support for test sharding for accelerated execution time. To use FTL devices, you need Android Gradle Plugin 8.2 with the latest Alpha version of the Firebase Test Lab Gradle plugin. Learn more.
Download Android Studio today!
Now is the time to download Android Studio Hedgehog to incorporate the new features into your workflow. As always, we appreciate any feedback on things you like, issues, or features you would like to see. If you find an issue, please check the known issues and file a bug if needed. Remember to also follow us on X (formerly known as Twitter), Medium, or YouTube for more Android development updates!
*Java is a trademark or registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Posted by Isabella Fiterman – Product Marketing Manager, and Sandhya Mohan – Product Manager
At this year’s Google I/O, one of the most exciting announcements for Android developers was the introduction of Studio Bot, an AI-powered coding assistant which can be accessed directly in Android Studio. Studio Bot can accelerate your ability to write high-quality Android apps faster by helping generate code for your app, answering your questions, finding relevant resources— all without ever having to leave Android Studio. After our announcement you told us how excited you were about this AI-powered coding companion, and those of you outside of the U.S were eager to get your hands on it. We heard your feedback, and expanded Studio Bot to over 170 countries and territories in the canary release channel of Android Studio.
Ask Studio Bot your Android development questions
Studio Bot is powered by artificial intelligence and can understand natural language, so you can ask development questions in your own words. While it’s now available in most countries, it is designed to be used in English. You can enter your questions in Studio Bot’s chat window ranging from very simple and open-ended ones to specific problems that you need help with. Here are some examples of the types of queries it can answer:
How do I add camera support to my app?
I want to create a Room database.
Can you remind me of the format for javadocs?
What's the best way to get location on Android?
Studio Bot remembers the context of the conversation, so you can also ask follow-up questions, such as “Can you give me the code for this in Kotlin?” or “Can you show me how to do it in Compose?”
Designed with privacy in mind
Studio Bot was designed with privacy in mind. You don’t need to send your source code to take advantage of Studio Bot’s features. By default, Studio Bot’s responses are purely based on conversation history, and you control whether you want to share additional context or code for customized responses. Much like our work on other AI projects, we stick to a set of AI Principles that hold us accountable.
Focus on quality
Studio Bot is still in its early days, and we suggest validating its responses before using them in a production app. We’re continuing to improve its Android development knowledge base and quality of responses so that it can better support your development needs in the future. You can help us improve Studio Bot by trying it out and sharing your feedback on its responses using the thumbs up and down buttons.
Try it out!
Download the latest canary release of Android Studio and read more about how you can get started with Studio Bot. You can also sign up to receive updates on Studio Bot as the experience evolves.
When we first released Compose 1.0 in 2021, we were focused on getting the API surface right to provide a solid foundation to build on. We wanted a powerful and expressive API that was easy to use and stable so that developers could confidently use it in production. As we continue to improve the API, performance is our top priority, and in the August ‘23 release, we have landed many performance improvements.
Modifier performance
Modifiers see large performance improvements, up to 80% improvement to composition time, in this release. The best part is that, thanks to our work getting the API surface right in the first release, most apps will see these benefits just by upgrading to the August ‘23 release.
We have a suite of benchmarks that are used to monitor for regressions and to inform our investments in improving performance. After the initial 1.0 release of Compose, we began focusing on where we could make improvements. The benchmarks showed that we were spending more time than anticipated materializing modifiers. Modifiers make up the vast majority of a composition tree and, as such, were the largest contributor to initial composition time in Compose. Refactoring modifiers to a more efficient design began under the hood in the October ‘22 release.
The October ‘22 release included new APIs and performance improvements in our lowest level module, Compose UI. Modifiers build on top of each other so we started migrating our low level modifiers in Compose Foundation in the next release, March ‘23. This included graphicsLayer, low level focus modifiers, padding, and offset. These low level modifiers are used by other highly utilized modifiers such as Clickable, and are also utilized by many framework Composables such as Text. Migrating modifiers in the March ‘23 release brought performance improvements to those components, but the real gains would come when we could migrate the higher level modifiers and composables themselves to the new modifier system.
In the August ‘23 release, we have begun migrating the Clickable modifier to the new modifier system, bringing substantial improvements to composition time, in some cases up to 80%. This is especially relevant in lazy lists that contain clickable elements such as buttons. Modifier.indication, used by Clickable, is still in the process of being migrated, so we anticipate further gains to come in future releases.
As part of this work, we identified a use case for composed modifiers that wasn’t covered in the original refactor and added a new API to create Modifier.Node elements that consume CompositionLocal instances.
We are now working on documentation to guide you through migrating your own modifiers to the new Modifier.Node API. To get started right away, you can reference the samples in our repository.
Learn more about the rationale behind the changes in the Compose Modifiers deep dive talk from Android Dev Summit ‘22.
Memory
This release includes a number of improvements in memory usage. We have taken a hard look at allocations happening across different Compose APIs and have reduced the total allocations in a number of areas, especially in the graphics stack and vector resource loading. This not only reduces the memory footprint of Compose, but also directly improves performance, as we spend less time allocating memory and reduce garbage collection.
In addition, we fixed a memory leak when using ComposeView, which will benefit all apps but especially those that use multi-activity architecture or large amounts of View/Compose interop.
Text
BasicText has moved to a new rendering system backed by the modifier work, which has brought an average of gain of 22% to initial composition time and up to a 70% gain in one benchmark of complex layouts involving text.
A number of Text APIs have also been stabilized, including:
We’re grateful for all of the bug reports and feature requests submitted to our issue tracker — they help us to improve Compose and build the APIs you need. Continue providing your feedback, and help us make Compose better!
Wondering what’s next? Check out our roadmap to see the features we’re currently thinking about and working on. We can’t wait to see what you build next!
Posted by Alan Leung, Staff Software Engineer, Fabien Sanglard, Senior Software Engineer, Juan Sebastian Oviedo, Senior Product Manager
A closeup look into how the Android Studio team built Live Edit; a feature that accelerates the Compose development process by continuously updating the running application as code changes are made.
What’s Live Edit and how can it help me?
Live Edit introduces a new way to edit your app’s Jetpack Compose UI by instantly deploying code changes to the running application on a physical device or emulator. This means that you can make changes to your app’s UI and immediately see their effect on the running application, enabling you to iterate faster and be more productive in your development. Live Edit was recently released to the stable channel with Android Studio Giraffe and can be enabled in the Editor settings. Developers like Plex and Pocket Casts are already using Live Edit and it has accelerated their development process for Compose UI. It is also helping them in the process of migrating from XML views to Compose.
Live Edit in action on Android Studio Hedgehog
When should I use Live Edit?
Live Edit is a different feature from Compose Preview and Apply Changes. These features provide value in different ways:
[Kotlin only, supports live recomposition] Make changes to your Compose app’s UI and immediately see their effect on the running application on an emulator or physical device.
Quickly see the effect of updates to UX elements (such as modifier updates and animations) on the overall app experience while the application is running.
Deploy code and resource updates to a running app without restarting it—and, in some cases, without restarting the current activity.
Update code and resources in a non-Compose app without having to redeploy it to an emulator or physical device.
How does it work?
At a high level, Live Edit does the following:
Detects source code changes.
Compiles classes that were updated.
Pushes new classes to the device.
Adds a hook in each class method bytecode to redirect calls to the new bytecode.
Edits the app classpath to ensure changes persist even if the app is restarted.
Live Edit architecture
Keystroke detection
This step is handled via the Intellij IDEA Program Structure Interface (PSI) tree. Listeners allow LE to detect the moment a developer makes a change in the Android Studio editor.
Compilation
Fundamentally, Live Edit still relies on the Kotlin compiler to generate code for each incremental change.
Our goal was to create a system where there is less than 250ms latency between the last keystroke and the moment the recomposition happens on the device. Doing a typical incremental build or invoking an external compiler in a traditional sense would not achieve our performance requirement. Instead, Live Edit leverages Android Studio’s tight integration with the Kotlin compiler.
On the highest level, the Kotlin compiler’s compilation can be divided into two stages.
Analysis
Code generation
The analysis performed as the first step is not entirely restricted to a build process. In fact, the same step is frequently done outside the build system as part of an IDE. From basic syntax checking to auto-complete suggestions, the IDE is constantly performing the same analysis (Step 1 of Diagram 1) and caching the result to provide Kotlin- and Compose-specific functionality to the developer. Our experiment shows that the majority of the compilation time is spent in the analysis stage during build. Live Edit uses that information to invoke the Compose compiler. This allows compilation to happen within 200ms using typical laptops used by developers. Live Edit further optimizes the code generation process and focuses solely on generating code that is only necessary to update the application.
The result is a plain .class file (not a .dex file) that is passed to the next step in the pipeline, desugaring.
How to desugar
When Android app source code is processed by the build system, it is usually “desugared” after it is compiled. This transformation step lets an app run on a set of Android versions devoid of syntactic sugar support and recent API features. This allows developers to use new APIs in their app while still making it available to devices that run older versions of Android.
There are two kinds of desugaring, known as language desugaring and library desugaring. Both of these transformations are performed by R8. To make sure the injected bytecode will match what is currently running on the device, Live Edit must make sure each class file is desugared in a way that is compatible with the desugaring done by the build system.
Language desugaring:
This type of bytecode rewrite aims to provide newer language features for lower targeted API level devices. The goal is to support language features such as the default interface method, lambda expression, method reference, and so on, allowing support down to the min API level. This value is extracted from the .apk file's DEX files using markers left in there by R8.
API desugaring:
Also known as library desugaring, this form of desugaring aims to support JAVA SDK methods and classes. This is configured by a JSON file. Among other things, method call sites are rewritten to target functions located in the desugar library (which is also embedded in the app, in a DEX file). To perform this step, Gradle collaborates with Live Edit by providing the JSON file used during library desugaring.
Function trampoline
To facilitate a rapid “per-key-stroke” speed update to a running application, we decided to not constantly utilize the JVMTI codeswap ability of the Android Runtime (ART) for every single edit. Instead, JVMTI is only used once to perform a code swap that installs trampolines onto a subset of methods within the soon-to-be modified classes inside the VMs. Utilizing something we called the “Primer” (Step 3 of Diagram 1), invocation of the methods is redirected to a specialized interpreter. When the application no longer sees updates for a period of time, Live Edit will replace the code with traditional DEX code for performance benefits of ART. This saves developers time by immediately updating the running application as code changes are made.
Function trampoline process
How code is interpreted
Live Edit compiles code on the fly. The resulting .class files are pushed, trampolined (as previously described), and then interpreted on the device. This interpretation is performed by the LiveEditInterpreter. The interpreter is not a full VM inside ART. It is a Frame interpreter built on top of ASM Frame. ASM Frame handles the low level logistics such as the stack/local variables's push/load, but it needs an Interpreter to actually execute opcode. This is what the OpcodeInterpreter is for.
Live Edit interpretation flow
Live Edit Interpreter is a simple loop which drives ASM/Interpreter opcodes interpretation.
Some JVM instructions cannot be implemented using a pure Java interpreter (in particular invokeSpecial and monitorEnter/Exit are problematic). For these, Live Edit uses JNI.
Dealing with lambdas
Lambdas are handled in a different manner because changes to lambda captures can result in changes in VM classes that are different in many method signatures. Instead, new lambda-related updates are sent to the running device and loaded as new classes instead of redefining any existing loaded classes as described in the previous section.
How does recomposition work?
Developers wanted a seamless and frictionless new approach to program Android applications. A key part of the Live Edit experience is the ability to see the application updated while the developer continuously writes code, without having to explicitly trigger a re-run with a button press. We needed a UI framework that has the ability to listen to model changes within the application and perform optimal redraws accordingly. Luckily, Jetpack Compose fits this task perfectly. With Live Edit, we added an extra dimension to the reactive programming paradigm where the framework also observes changes to the functions’ code.
To facilitate code modification monitoring, the Jetpack Compose compiler supplies Android Studio with a mapping of function elements to a set of recomposition group keys. The attached JVMTI agent invalidates the Compose state of a changed function in an asynchronous manner and the Compose runtime performs recomposition on Composables that are invalidated.
How we handle runtime errors during recomposition
Live Edit handling a runtime error
While the concept of a continuously updating application is rather exhilarating, our field studies showed that sometimes when developers are writing code, the program can be in an incomplete state where updating and re-executing certain functions would lead to undesirable results. Besides the automatic mode where updates are happening almost continuously, we have introduced two manual modes for the developer who wants a bit more control on when the application gets updated after new code is detected.
Even with that in mind, we want to make sure common issues caused by executing incomplete functions do not cause the application to terminate prematurely. Cases where a loop’s exit condition is still being written are detected by Live Edit to avoid an infinite loop within the program. Also, if a Live Edit update triggers recomposition and causes a runtime exception to be thrown, the Compose runtime will catch such an exception and recompose using the last known good state.
Consider the following piece of code:
var x = y / 10
Suppose the developer would like to change 10 to 50 by deleting the character 1 and inserting character 5 after. Android Studio could potentially update the application before the 5 is inserted and thus create a division-by-zero ArithmeticException. However, with the added error handling mentioned, the application would simply revert to “y / 10” until further updates are done in the editor.
What’s coming?
The Android Studio team believes Live Edit will change how UI code is written in a positive way and we are committed to continuously improve the Live Edit development experience. We are working on expanding the types of edits developers can perform. Furthermore, future versions of Live Edit will eliminate the need to invalidate the whole application during certain scenarios.
Additionally, PSI event detection comes with limitations such as when the user edits import statements. To solve this problem, future versions of Live Edit will rely on .class diffing to detect changes. Lastly, the full persisting functionality isn't currently available. Future versions of Live Edit will allow the application to be restarted outside of Android Studio and retain the Live Edit changes.
Get started with Live Edit
Live Edit is ready to be used in production and we hope it can greatly improve your experience developing for Android, especially for UI-heavy iterations. We would love to hear more about your interesting use cases, best practices and bug reports and suggestions.
Java is a trademark or registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Today, we are thrilled to announce the stable release of Android Studio Giraffe 🦒 : The official IDE for building Android apps!
In this Android Studio release, we have upgraded the IntelliJ platform to 2022.3, including a brand new visual look and feel in Android Studio, improvements to Live Edit, Compose animation previews, a new Device Explorer, a new SDK upgrade assistant, ability to use Kotlin DSL in your Gradle build scripts and much more. Read on to learn more about how Android Studio Giraffe 🦒 can help supercharge your developer productivity.
Thank you to all of you who have given us feedback and used Android Studio since we launched our initial version just over 10 years ago. Download the latest stable version today and we look forward to continuing to deliver on our commitment of delivering a best-in-class integrated development environment (IDE) focused on Android app development!
IDE Enhancements
New UI for Android Studio (Preview)
Along with the much anticipated IntelliJ Platform update, we are excited to share a preview of the visual look that we call the “New UI” for Android Studio Giraffe. The redesigned theme aims to reduce visual complexity, provide easier access to essential features, and disclose complex functionality as needed—resulting in a modern, cleaner look and feel.
The New UI was first released as an early preview in IntelliJ 2022.2 to gather feedback from users and other IntelliJ-based IDEs to ensure it could fully replace the previous UI. Since then, it’s progressed to beta in IntelliJ 2022.3, with many bug fixes and improvements.
With the Giraffe release, we’ve started adopting the new UI, with several Android Studio specific changes, such as optimizing the default main toolbar and tool windows configurations for Android and refreshing our iconography in the style. We are excited by this new design direction and will continue adoption through the Hedgehog release and onward.
To use the New UI, enable it in Settings > Appearance & Behavior > New UI. For a full list of changes, see the IntelliJ New UI documentation.
The New UI adopted from IntelliJ
New diagnostic & bug reporting tool
As you try the New UI, please provide us detailed feedback through our new diagnostic & bug reporting tool that makes it easier to report bugs with relevant log files already attached. The new bug reporting tool is found at Help > Collect Logs and Diagnostic Data.
New diagnostic & bug reporting tool
Updated Device Explorer
Also shipping with the new UI, is an updated Device Explorer (known as the Device File Explorer in previous versions of Android Studio). In the Device Explorer, files and related actions are located in the Files tab. Additionally, in the new Processes tab, you can view a list of debuggable processes for the connected device. From there you can also select a process and perform a kill , force-stop, or attach the debugger to a given process.
Updated Device Explorer
Coding Productivity
Use Live Edit to update composables in real time
Live Edit lets you update composables in Android emulators and physical devices in near real time. You can now edit composables and see the UI changes on the running device without re-deploying your app.
This helps you by minimizing the context switching between writing and building your app, letting you focus on writing code longer without interruption. To try Live Edit, enable it via Settings > Editor > Live Edit and use Android Gradle Plugin (AGP) 8.1 or higher and Jetpack Compose Runtime 1.3.0 or higher.
Use Live Edit to update composables in real time
Compose Animation Preview - Extend animation support
Compose Animation Preview now supports a number of additional Compose APIs, such as animate*AsState, CrossFade, rememberInfiniteTransition, and AnimatedContent (in addition to updateTransition and AnimatedVisibility). Additionally, now there are new pickers that let you set non-enum or boolean states to debug your Compose animation using precise inputs. For all supported Compose Animation APIs, you can play, pause, scrub & control speed.
Compose Animation Preview - Extend animation support
Android SDK Upgrade Assistant
The new Android SDK upgrade assistant lets you see the steps required to upgrade the targetSdkVersion, or the API level that your app targets, directly in the IDE. It also pulls upgrade-related documentation directly from the Android Developer site into its tool window, so you don't have to jump back and forth between your browser and the IDE. For each migration step, it highlights the major breaking changes and how to address them, and even filters the full list of changes to only show steps relevant to your app.
To open the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant, go to Tools > Android SDK Upgrade Assistant.
Android SDK Upgrade Assistant
Improvements to the build system
Kotlin DSL in your Gradle build scripts
Kotlin is not only more readable, it also offers better compile-time checking and IDE support. With Android Studio Giraffe, we are excited to offer the official support for Kotlin DSL in your Gradle build scripts. This means that Kotlin is the default language used in your project code, including UI with Jetpack Compose, and now editing the build scripts too!
Now, when you are creating new projects or modules starting from Android Studio Giraffe, you get the Kotlin DSL by default. And if you want to migrate existing builds, check out the Kotlin DSL migration guide.
We've been working with the Gradle and JetBrains teams on this improvement, and you can read more in their related announcements: Gradle Blog; JetBrains Blog.
Additionally, we’ve also added experimental support for TOML-based Gradle Version Catalogs, a feature that lets you manage dependencies in one central location and share dependencies across modules or projects. Android Studio now makes it easier to configure version catalogs through editor suggestions and integrations with the Project Structure dialog, plus the New Project Wizard.
Kotlin DSL in your Gradle build scripts
Download info during Gradle sync
If you’ve ever wondered if any unexpected dependency downloads are negatively impacting your sync performance, the new Sync tool window now includes a summary of time spent downloading dependencies, and a detailed view of downloads per repository. This view updates live as sync takes place. It can even help you identify inefficiencies in how you configure your repositories.
Download info during Gradle sync
Automatic per-app language support
Typically, multilingual users set their system language to one language—such as English—but they want to select other languages for specific apps, such as Dutch, Chinese, or Hindi. Android 13 introduced support for per-app language preferences, and now Android Gradle plugin 8.1 and higher can configure your app to support it automatically based on your project’s resources. Learn more.
Make selected modules toolbar button
With Android Studio Giraffe, you can now build only the current module you're working on by selecting the Make Selected Modules build option in the toolbar. This new option lets you check that the code you just wrote compiles without building more than needed. Learn more.
Kotlin DSL in your Gradle build scripts
Summary
To recap, Android Studio Giraffe includes these new enhancements and features. You can always learn more with our detailed release notes.
IDE Enhancements
Upgraded to IntelliJ Platform 2022.3: Includes a number of features and bug fixes
New UI for Android Studio : Android Studio now adopts a number of improvements from the IntelliJ's modern design language
Updated Device Explorer : Offers two new tabs : Files & Processes from where you can view a list of debuggable processes, perform a kill, force-stop, or attach the debugger
New diagnostic & bug reporting tool : Easier to report bugs for Android Studio with relevant log files already attached
Coding Productivity
Use Live Edit to update composables in real time : Update composables in real time, edit composables and see the UI changes on the running device without re-deploying your app
Compose Animation Preview - Extend animation support : Now supports a number of additional Compose APIs and new pickers that let you set non-enum or boolean states to debug your Compose animation using precise inputs
Android SDK Upgrade Assistant : Now lets you see the steps required to upgrade the targetSdkVersion, or the API level that your app targets directly in Studio
Improvements to the build system
Kotlin DSL in your Gradle build scripts : With official support for Kotlin DSL in your Gradle build scripts, Kotlin is now the single default language for project code, UI with Jetpack Compose, and now for build scripts
Download info during Gradle sync : Shows a summary of time spent downloading dependencies and a detailed view of downloads per repository
Automatic per-app language support : AGP can now automatically configure per-app language preferences
Make selected modules toolbar button : build only the current module you're working on by selecting the Make Selected Modules build option in the toolbar
Download Android Studio Today!
Now is the time to download Android Studio Giraffe 🦒 to incorporate the new features into your workflow. As always, we appreciate any feedback on things you like and issues or features you would like to see. If you find a bug or issue, please file an issue and also check out known issues. Remember to also follow us on Twitter, Medium, or YouTube for more Android development updates!
Posted by Jolanda Verhoef, Android Developer Relations Engineer
It has been almost two years since we launched the first stable version of Jetpack Compose, and since then, we’ve seen its adoption and feature set grow spectacularly. Whether you write an application for smartphones, foldables, tablets, ChromeOS devices, smartwatches, or TVs, Compose has got you covered! We recommend you to use Compose for all new Wear OS, phone and large-screen apps. With new tooling and library features, extended Material Design 3, large screen, and Wear OS support, and alpha versions of Compose for homescreen widgets and TV… This is an exciting time!
Compose in the community
In the last year, we’ve seen many companies investigating and choosing Compose to build new features and migrate screens in their production applications. 24% of the top 1000 apps on Google Play have already chosen to adopt Compose! For example, Dropbox engineers told us that they rewrote their search experience in Compose in just a few weeks, which was 40% less time than anticipated, and less than half the time it took the team to build the feature on iOS. They also shared that they were interested in adopting Compose “because of its first-class support for design systems and tooling support”. Our Google Drive team cut their development time nearly in half when using Compose combined with architecture improvements.
It’s great to see how these teams experience faster development cycles, and also feel their UI code is more testable. Inspired? Start by reading our guide How to Adopt Compose for your Team, which outlines how and where to start, and shows the areas of development where Compose can bring huge added value.
Library features & development
Since we released the first Compose Bill of Materials in October last year, we’ve been working on new features, bug fixes, performance improvements, and bringing Compose to everywhere you build UI: phones, tablets, foldables, watches, TV, and your home screen. You can find all changes in the May 2023 release and the latest alpha versions of the Compose libraries.
We’ve heard from you that performance is something you care about, and that it’s not always clear how to create performant Compose applications. We’re continuously improving the performance of Compose. For example, as of last October, we started migrating modifiers to a new and more efficient system, and we’re starting to see the results of that migration. For text alone, this work resulted in an average 22% performance gain that can be seen in the latest alpha release, and these improvements apply across the board. To get these benefits in your app, all you have to do is update your Compose version!
Text and TextField got many upgrades in the past months. Next to the performance improvements we already mentioned, Compose now supports the latest emoji version 🫶 and includes new text features such as outlining text, hyphenation support, and configuring line breaking behavior. Read more in the release notes of the compose-foundation and compose-ui libraries.
The new pager component allows you to horizontally or vertically flip through content, which is similar to ViewPager2 in Views. It allows deep customization options, making it possible to create visually stunning effects:
Choose a song using the HorizontalPager composable. Learn how to implement this and other fancy effects in Rebecca Franks' blog post.
The new flow layouts FlowRow and FlowColumn make it easy to arrange content in a vertical or horizontal flow, much like lines of text in a paragraph. They also enable dynamic sizing using weights to distribute the items across the container.
Using flow layouts to show the search filters in a real estate app
To learn more about the new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes, see the release notes of the latest stable and newest alpha release of the Compose libraries.
Tools
Developing your app using Jetpack Compose is much easier with the new and improved tools around it. We added tons of new features to Android Studio to improve your workflow and efficiency. Here are some highlights:
Compose Preview now supports live updates across multiple files, for example, if you make a change in your Theme.kt file, you can see all Previews updates automatically in your UI files.
Improving auto-complete behavior. For example, we now show icon previews when you’re adding Material icons, and we keep the @Composable annotation when running “Implement Members".
Showing Compose state information in the debugger. While debugging your app, the debugger will tell you exactly which parameters have “Changed” or have remained “Unchanged”, so you can more efficiently investigate the cause of the recomposition.
You can try out the new Studio Bot, an experimental AI powered conversational experience in Android Studio to help you generate code, fix issues, and learn about best practices, including all things Compose. This is an early experiment, but we would love for you to give it a try!
Emulator support for the newly announced Pixel Fold and Tablet Virtual Devices, so that you can test your Compose app before these devices launch later this year.
A new Espresso Device API that lets you apply rotation changes, folds, and other synchronous configuration changes to your virtual devices under test.
We’re also actively working on visual linting and accessibility checks for previews so you can automatically audit your Compose UI and check for issues across different screen sizes, and on multipreview templates to help you quickly add common sets of previews.
Material 3
Material 3 is the recommended design system for Android apps, and the latest 1.1 stable release adds a lot of great new features. We added new components like bottom sheets, date and time pickers, search bars, tooltips, and others. We also graduated many of the core components to stable, added more motion and interaction support, and included edge-to-edge support in many components. Watch this video to learn how to implement Material You in your app:
Extending Compose to more surfaces
We want Compose to be the programming model for UI wherever you run Android. This means including first-class support for large screens such as foldables and tablets and publishing libraries that make it possible to use Compose to write your homescreen widgets, smartwatch apps, and TV applications.
Large screen support
We’ve continued our efforts to make development for large screens easy when you use Compose. The pager and flow layouts that we released are common patterns on large screen devices. In addition, we added a new Compose library that lets you observe the device’s window size class so you can easily build adaptive UI.
When attaching a mouse to an Android device, Compose now correctly changes the mouse cursor to a caret when you hover the cursor over text fields or selectable text. This helps the user to understand what elements on screen they can interact with.
Glance
Today we publish the first beta version of the Jetpack Glance library! Glance lets you develop widgets optimized for Android phone, tablet, and foldable homescreens using Jetpack Compose. The library gives you the latest Android widget improvements out of the box, using Kotlin and Compose:
Glance simplifies the implementation of interactive widgets, so you can showcase your app’s top features, right on a user’s home screen.
Glance makes it easy to build responsive widgets that look great across form factors.
Glance enables faster UI Iteration with your designers, ensuring a high quality user experience.
Wear OS
We launched Compose for Wear OS 1.1 stable last December, and we’re working hard on the new 1.2 release which is currently in alpha. Here’s some of the highlights of the continuous improvements and new features that we are bringing to your wrist:
The placeholder and placeholderShimmer add elegant loading animations that can be used on chips and cards while content is loading.
expandableItems make it possible to fold long lists or long text, and only expand to show their full length upon user interaction.
Rotary input enhancements available in Horologist add intuitive snap and fling behaviors when a user is navigating lists with rotary input.
Android Studio now lets you preview multiple watch screen and text sizes while building a Compose app. Use the Annotations that we have added here.
Compose for TV
You can now build pixel perfect living room experiences with the alpha release of Compose for TV! With the new AndroidX TV library, you can apply all of the benefits of Compose to the unique requirements for Android TV. We worked closely with the community to build an intuitive API with powerful capabilities. Engineers from Soundcloud shared with us that “thanks to Compose for TV, we are able to reuse components and move much faster than the old Leanback View APIs would have ever allowed us to.” And Plex shared that “TV focus and scrolling support on Compose has greatly improved our developer productivity and app performance.”
Compose for TV comes with a variety of components such as ImmersiveList and Carousel that are specifically optimized for the living room experience. With just a few lines of code, you can create great TV UIs.
It’s great to see more and more internally and externally developed libraries add support for Compose. For example, loading pictures asynchronously can now be done with the GlideImage composable from the Glide library. And Google Maps released a library which makes it much easier to declaratively create your map implementations.
GoogleMap(
//...
) {
Marker(
state = MarkerState(position = LatLng(-34, 151)),
title = "Marker in Sydney"
)
Marker(
state = MarkerState(position = LatLng(35.66, 139.6)),
title = "Marker in Tokyo"
)
}
New and updated guidance
No matter where you are in your learning journey, we’ve got you covered! We added and revamped a lot of the guidance on Compose:
Learn hands-on with the Compose for Android Developers course, where you can learn the basics and deep dive into layouts, state, form factors, and more. We updated the course to include all the latest resources.
If you prefer watching videos, following on the well-received Compose Basics MAD Skills series, we recently published a new MAD Skills series on Layouts and Modifiers. With five episodes covering everything from the fundamentals to advanced concepts and functionality, a Q&A with Googlers, and a community tip, this series will help you to quickly improve your Compose Layout knowledge.
Learn how to implement Material 3 theming in your app with the new codelab.
Happy Composing!
We hope you're as excited by these developments as we are! If you haven't started yet, it's time to learn Jetpack Compose and see how your team and development process can benefit from it. Get ready for improved velocity and productivity. Happy Composing!
Posted by 
Posted by Sandhya Mohan – Product Manager, Android Studio
Posted by Neville Sicard-Gregory – Senior Product Manager, Android Studio
Posted by Sandhya Mohan, Product Manager
Posted by Isabella Fiterman – Product Marketing Manager, and Sandhya Mohan – Product Manager
Posted by 
Posted by Alan Leung, Staff Software Engineer, 
.png)
.png)
.png)
Posted by Mayank Jain, Product Manager
.gif)
Posted by 
